We’re looking for business owners and entrepreneurs who are looking for that idea, perspective, help, that will put them back on the right track.

At Aspire, both Chris and I love to work with entrepreneurs because we want to share our hard-earned knowledge and more importantly we enjoy helping others succeed (it’s one of our ‘things’). With that in mind, we’re launching our first (hopefully of many) Advisory Afternoon. On Wednesday, December 21st, before we shut things down for the year, we’re freeing up an entire afternoon to work with business owners and help them get past whatever it might be that they’re stuck on.

But we need your help. We need to find the right business owner, who not only has a challenge but is also available on the afternoon of the 21st. We’ll be doing 2 sessions with a single business owner and a peer group / mastermind session with 5 or 6 business owners to close out the day.

The single sessions will include at least Chris and I and depending on the challenge, we’d like to bring in at least another appropriate ‘expert’ (i.e. Marketing, Accounting, Exit Planning – whatever might make sense). So that entrepreneur is going to get a ROOMFUL of help…!

And… in case it’s not clear, these are giveaways. We’re not selling anything, there’s no money involved and in fact, we’ll be supplying drinks and snacks (including adult beverages for the peer group / mastermind if anyone would like one).

Who are you looking for?

The Strategic Advisory Sessions will work best with an entrepreneur who has a specific challenge (or maybe two at the most) that they need help with. That could include things like starting a new product line (or business), struggling with profitability, people problems, or strategic or operational challenges – whatever’s on your mind that’s holding you back.

The Peer Group will be a great opportunity to share a challenge with a group of like-minded business owners (and advisors), get some great input and ideas and experience the power of a facilitated mastermind group. If you haven’t had that experience, you’ll be amazed by what you can get out of it – if you have, then you know what we mean.

Most of all – the goal is to add value to Kansas City entrepreneurs and have some fun…!

Here’s how to get involved:

If you or someone you know would benefit from an advisory session or being part of the Peer Group Mastermind and you’re available on the afternoon of Wednesday, December 21st, just click here for our Contact Page, select ‘Awesome Advisory Afternoon’ as the topic and let us know your name and business information.

We’ll draw from the entries by the end of the day on Wednesday, December 14th and then get you scheduled.

If you have any questions or if you’d just like to discuss, don’t hesitate to reach out or comment here, we’d love to hear from you. Please share this with your networks (in Kansas City) and help us and others have an ‘Awesome Advisory Afternoon‘.

If you want to keep building a great business, you have to be on the lookout for new ideas and different ways to succeed.

One of the best ways to do that is finding local business success stories. Why are they succeeding? What can you learn from them? All of the ideas won’t always translate to your specific business or industry – but a lot of them will.

With that in mind, I ran across a great success story out of Springfield Missouri this past weekend. We were going down to Branson for a family reunion trip and had several people suggest stopping in Springfield to pick up some Hurts Donuts on the way. It turns out this particular Donut shop has only been open for a couple of years – but it’s booming! They have a second location and have also already franchised to several more locations with a lot more growth on the horizon.

What’s even more interesting – at least from a business perspective, is that the owners, Kas and Tim Clegg didn’t have any previous baking experience before they opened that first store. And they bet the farm – they took literally all of their available money to open the shop and had only $7 to their name when the first customers came in the door. Yet despite all of that, they were able to pay off all their loans and start saving for long term plans within a few months. Definitely not a typical start-up, especially in the food industry.

Why did they succeed?

Clearly, there’s an element of being in the right place at the right time but that only happens when you’re doing a lot of other things right. Here are a few things they’re doing that at least partially explain their success:

Fun

When you go into their stores, it’s clear they’re having fun. And they’ve put a lot of thought and creativity into their products and names. With donuts like the Cookie Monster (box below – middle row, far left) it’s clear these aren’t your every day donuts.

In fact, the entire menu has a lot of creativity in it – which really works well with Social Media. Most businesses aren’t going to be able to pull off this kind of thing successfully, but every business can have more fun. And that can have a huge impact on the customers (and how much they talk about your product or service).

Do you try to have fun with any part of your business? Do you encourage your employees to have fun?

Accessibility

The owners have done several things to make sure their product is easily accessible to anyone who wants it. If you’re in the area, you can have a great experience and enjoy a fantastic donut in less than 20 minutes and for a couple of dollars. They’re open 24 hours, every day of the year and on top of that, they have a food truck, actually a refurbished ambulance, that goes around the community for events and special occasions.

I wouldn’t recommend being open 24 hours a day for most businesses, but it is important that people can easily try your product or service.

Do you have ways for your potential customers to check you out without a lot of hurdles? Can they try before they buy? Can they get a sample?

Smart Value

It’s a critical balancing act to figure out the right pricing. You have to make a strong profit margin on your product or service, but you also have to be viewed as a reasonable price for what you’re offering. You can buy donuts at a lot of places – grocery stores and convenience stores have them by the box for only a few bucks. However, you can only get Hurts Donuts at Hurts… so it’s expected that they’ll be priced at a premium. And they are – but it’s comparable to a Dunkin Donuts.

Hurts has a clever pricing approach – if you want to pick out your own donuts, either a dozen or a half-dozen, it’s a slight premium. If you let them pick out your dozen, it’s a dollar a donut. You get a better price and they get to drive the experience (and make sure they balance out their inventory). It’s an excellent idea.

Does your pricing reflect a smart value to your customers? When’s the last time you reviewed it?

Quality

Of course, none of the attributes listed above will matter if you don’t have a quality product (or service). Hurts makes a really good donut. I didn’t get a chance to try everything, but the several that I did try were all excellent, even a day or two later. The good news is that once you figure out a ‘recipe’ for how to do something the right way, it should be easy to follow. Unfortunately, not all businesses are quite as straightforward as donuts – but the concept’s the same.

How much do you focus on quality? When’s the last time you looked at improving what you offer?

What could you learn from Hurts?

Donuts are fun and delicious – so it’s not a surprise that people love them. And it’s possible this is a passing trend (like cupcakes a few years ago). But… there are a million places to buy donuts and most of them aren’t having the kind of success that Hurts is having. Your business is almost certainly not a donut shop and you may not have the potential for people lining up at your door for your product or services, but you can always learn new ideas and find ways to get better – and just having the willingness to do that will put you ahead of a lot of your competitors.

What can you learn from the Hurts story? What ideas can you apply to your business? We’d love to hear your thoughts.

With Thanksgiving upon us, there is no other time of the year that we intentionally focus on gratitude, appreciation, and being thankful more than this day. But sometimes we all need a little nudge.

In that spirit, we thought it would be fun to provide a game of sorts that you could try at home and at work to help remind everyone that we all have much to be thankful for. The good news is to participate you don’t need to have similar jobs, live in the same neighborhood, go to the same church, have the same political views, or any other differentiator. You just need to be willing to participate!

It is very hard to watch the news or follow anything on the social media that really makes you feel good. Think about it, when was the last time you saw a “Breaking News” story and it was something positive? Don’t misunderstand, there are lots of inspirational stories out there, it is just that the overall ratio is very lopsided. One needs to almost intentionally seek out the positive stories.

So let’s seek them out…intentionally uncovering positives

When: Before Thanksgiving Dinner or during your next company meeting give this a try.

How: Everyone will make two gratitude/appreciation comments; one directed inward and one outward. First a statement about one thing they are personally thankful for, then something they are thankful for about the person to their right. That way it naturally flows around the table/room.

#2) “One thing I am thankful for about the person to my right” (small groups may choose to say something about every person present)

Example: Thanksgiving Dinner: “I am thankful that you still answer your phone when I call”

At work: “I am thankful for your efforts on the ABC Account”

Your turn…“I am thankful (person to my right)____________________

The only rules are that both statements must be positive. They can be as serious or lighthearted as you desire, but no subliminal messages, no backhanded compliments, or passive aggressive behavior. You may have your differences with crazy Uncle Buck or Bob in shipping, but this isn’t the time to get a jab in. Everyone has some good qualities, you only need to share one. This is simply about gratitude and being thankful.

We hope you consider giving this little exercise of gratitude a try during Thanksgiving. Who knows maybe you will learn a thing or two about someone that you didn’t know before. At the end of the day, we still live in a pretty awesome country. Sometimes we need to be reminded a glass half full is always better than the glass half empty. It really is up to us to make the choice. This post is pretty short, feel free to print if you want to have it handy as a reference.

Most importantly, thank you to all our Aspire clients for entrusting us to be a part of your business. To you and all our friends, family, and business colleagues….Happy Thanksgiving! As always we value any comments in the space below.

It’s the start of Global Entrepreneurship Week – a time to celebrate the entrepreneurial spirit, but also the time to encourage it.

As a business coach, I have the great opportunity to work with business owners and entrepreneurs every day of the week (and I love my job…!). So in addition to having my own business, I also have a seat at the table for lots of other endeavors. As you might imagine, owning a business isn’t always sunshine and roses – it’s the greatest game out there, but it’s not easy and there are challenging days for everyone.

With that in mind, I thought I would share a few of my favorite quotes – they might get you to think a bit differently and hopefully inspire you if you’re at one of those critical junctions in your life or business.

This first one is one of my all time favorite quotes – if you already have a business, you’ve made this leap, but all of us occasionally need to be reminded to push out into the open waters and keep looking around the next bend.

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain

The biggest difference between an entrepreneur and everyone else is a track record of putting something out there and making a sale. The entrepreneur might fail (actually will almost surely fail) at some point, but they’ll learn and they’ll go do it again. They won’t ‘try’ to do anything, they’ll just go out and do it – learn from it and do it again.

“Do. Or do not. There is no try.” – Yoda

Of course having your mind right and getting out there and taking swings is only the first part of the journey. Failure will happen, it’s a necessary and natural part of the process of building a business, but it’s still difficult to overcome. That’s why this quote from Henry Ford is so important – challenge and failure are necessary parts of long-term success…!

“When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.” – Henry Ford

It’s critical to remember that you are the only person who can determine your success. A lot of would-be entrepreneurs are scared off by the idea that they have to build something ‘big’ or it’s not worth doing. There are a lot of great ‘small’ businesses out there who are choosing to be small – just ask Jason Fried, founder of 37 Signals…

“There’s nothing wrong with staying small. You can do big things with a small team.” – Jason Fried

“Rich people have small TVs and big libraries, and poor people have small libraries and big TVs.” – Zig Ziglar

Your hard work and vision are critical, but you can’t do it by yourself. Another key component to business success comes from building the right team – which means finding the right people. If you can create an engaged, excited team, the sky is the limit…!

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

I’ll close this out with another one of my favorites – it pretty much sums up the whole entrepreneurial endeavor…

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” – Theodore Roosevelt

What about you? Do any of these resonate with you? Which one? What quote do you think I missed or should have included? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

It’s been painful, but the end is here! After enduring a Presidential Election that has been like the nightmare you just can’t stop repeating, the end is finally here. But even at this point, the only thing we can safely predict is that the endless barrage of campaign commercials, yard signs, billboards, and social media feeds is going to end. For everything that may follow, all we can say is…stay tuned.

What have we learned?

That is a good question. Our goal is a succinct post each week to help you sharpen your saw and make your business a little better; a COO client of ours recently shared they never miss them for that reason. So with the Election Day finally upon us, here are a few lessons I think we can all use as take-a-ways from this campaign and hopefully apply them to your business for positive results.

Keep ItSimple Stupid

Remember the acronym KISS? It works. The simpler you can keep your message the more likely people will remember it. It is easy to overcomplicate things, this goes for everything from marketing, to developing processes, to creating compensation programs. When it is too complicated you lose and confuse people. Trump started out with “Make America Great Again” and he got a large following to rally around that because it spoke to them. Obama’s were “Change” & “Hope” in 2008 and that resonated with voters.

Simple is better.

Without a Niche, it’s Hard to Excel

It is very hard to be all things to all people. Bernie Sanders message resonated with the younger demographic, many who had never participated in an election before and he kept his message on point. Focusing on this niche, his message gained momentum and created an unexpected challenger for Hillary Clinton previously assumed to be a given for the Democratic nomination. In the Republican camp, instead of strategically narrowing their field before the primaries, they had 18 people running for President and it ended up diluting the message when they needed to be unifying. While Trump was being dismissed as a sideshow by his adversaries, the seasoned (R) politicians, his primary niche was larger and he started gaining traction while knocking them off one by one.

Know your Niche.

Guide Yourself Accordingly

There is little privacy left in the world. We share our lives in real time on social media. Today, everyone has HD video and audio recorders as standard equipment on their phones. Every word you speak can be dissected into sound bites to spin it positively or negatively or get printed out of context. If you’re striving to build a reputable business it is imperative that everyone in your organization understands that their actions are a reflection of not only them personally but the entire company. Before you post, tweet, or speak, a great litmus test is to ask yourself if your Mother, the Pope, or someone you respect would approve before you hit send. Who knows one day you may decide to run for office too!

Tomorrow will come

Hopefully, you get out and vote (or already voted early). It really is one of the great equalizers in our country. Regardless of the outcomes of this election, we need to hope and pray that our new leaders lead and make decisions that are in the best interest of our country and not self-serving. In many ways, it is very similar to you running your own businesses, trying to make decisions that are in the best interest of your company and the people who depend on it. Tomorrow will come, and as a country, we must work to move forward.

So what do you think? This may be like opening a can of worms, but what about you? What have you learned from this Presidential Election? We do value any and all comments in the space below.

5 Ideas You Must Have if You Want to Scale

You’ve heard it before, but it doesn’t make it any less true. You have to work smarter, not harder.

Scaling a business isn’t as simple as just working harder. In fact, we often talk to business owners who are maxing out their time and effort trying to grow their business and they are very frustrated with the results they’re getting.

What does that actually mean? Well, here are 5 key ideas that you need to establish in your business before you’re going to be able to scale successfully. As a way to remember the list – think about having the S.P.A.C.E. for growth:

S. Simplicity

Imagine a situation where you had to explain a really complicated idea to someone? Maybe you break out the diagrams and the charts and graphs, maybe you just go into excruciating details. Whatever you do, it’s a painful process and it takes a lot of work. Now try doing that 100 times a week to dozens of different people. It would be exhausting and not very successful. That’s what it’s like to try to scale an overly complicated business.

The best business models and the best value propositions are the ones that people ‘get’ right away, with minimal explanation.

Netflix – the ability to watch shows and movies whenever I want

Chipotle – a burrito, bowl or taco of fresh ingredients that I can see and select quickly and easily

Can you explain your business in a single sentence or a few words? Have you simplified your operational processes to the point where it’s easy and obvious how new employees fit into your model (think McDonald’s adding a new fry cook)?

Complexity will slow you down. What could you do to simplify and streamline your business?

P. Profitability

Most business owners tend to focus on revenue when they think about their business. The top line is a lot easier to calculate (how much did we sell this month) and because it’s a bigger number, it tends to be more fun to think about. But revenue can’t tell you how your business is actually doing. How healthy it is. For that, you need to be looking at your profitability. Great revenue, even if it’s growing, doesn’t mean ANYTHING if you aren’t keeping any of it.

As you grow, there will be times when it will be difficult to maintain profitability. You’ll have to make investments – people, equipment, space, etc. And often those investments start costing you before they will pay off. However, as long as you’re maintaining a healthy margin and not trying to grow too fast, you should be able to keep things in the black.

What’s a healthy profit margin? It varies a lot by industry, but a good general rule of thumb for small businesses is a range of 10% to 20% profit margins. If you’re much below 10% then you’re running a significant risk that a bad month or two could take you down. If you’re running much above 20% – enjoy it, but don’t plan on having it last. You’ll start getting competition and pricing pressure if things are that rich.

You can’t scale if you’re not profitable. How closely do you track your profitability and are you in a healthy range?

A. Accountability

It doesn’t matter how talented or hard working you are as a business owner. If you want to scale your business, you’re going to have to rely on other people and the most important trait they need to have is accountability. As a leader, you need to be able to carve out large pieces of the business and have others take ownership of the results needed for success.

Right now, if there’s a problem in your business, who’s staying up late at night to figure out how to solve it? If you, as the owner, are the only one doing that, it’s going to be a painful (and likely unsuccessful) grind to grow your business. You must have a team that’s engaged, that cares about the results, that wants to win – and you need to let them make the important decisions…and fail occasionally. That’s the only way you’ll make significant progress once the business is bigger than just you.

Do you have a leadership team that is making things happen? What would it take to get others ‘owning’ critical parts of your business?

C. Clarity

Where are you headed in your business? What are you all about? If you asked 10 people (employees, clients, partners) those questions, how many different answers would you get? Most of us would get 10…a few might get even more than that!

If you want to scale your business, it’s not enough to have a general idea of where you’re going and who you are, it must be crystal clear. Greg McKeown – the author of Essentialism calls it your Essential Intent and explains that it needs to be inspiring and concrete. Everyone should easily be able to answer the question

“How will we know when we’ve succeeded?”

Author Mike Michalowicz talks about the importance of having Immutable Laws, those unbreakable rules you follow that make it your business. They are a mix of your core values, ethics and general business principles that you feel very strongly about. If someone breaks a law, they’re out. They are a fantastic tool for helping employees and customers understand who you are…but they have to be communicated clearly (and frequently) in order to be useful.

Are you currently operating with clarity? Do you clearly communicate a vision that your team is embracing and can measure? If you’re not all on the same page and headed the same direction, you will not be able to scale your business.

E. Extraordinary

Regardless of the industry you’re in, it’s likely that you have competitors. You can start, and even run a moderately successful business by delivering more value than you charge for. But if you want to thrive. If you want to be able to successfully scale your business, then you need more.

You have to be different in some important way, you have to stand out from those competitors.

You need to be extraordinary.

What do you do that you’re competitors aren’t currently doing (and that your clients love)? If you have trouble answering that question, then you’re going to have trouble growing the business. If nothing else sets you apart, you’re eventually going to have to compete on price and unless you’re Walmart, you’re not going to win that battle.

The good news is that you can be extraordinary in a lot of different ways. You could offer up a higher level of service than everyone else. You could be the ‘smart’ choice that focuses on education, or long-term value, or ease of use or premium quality. There are lots of options, but you have to choose to be extraordinary in some way and continually make it happen.

Are you extraordinary in some way now? How? Would your clients agree with you? How are you communicating that?

S.P.A.C.E. for Growth…

Scaling your business isn’t easy, but it’s practically impossible if you don’t have a strong foundation. This isn’t a complete list, every business is different, but if you want to grow you will definitely need at least these 5 ideas built into your business:

Simplicity

Profitability

Accountability

Clarity

Extraordinary

What do you think? Did I miss a key concept? What else would you add? What do you disagree with? We’d love to hear your thoughts.

In business, we often are tempted to make aggressive corrections when we discover an issue that is affecting output or productivity. A recent experience reminded me that it is better to under correct than to over-correct. I learned how you can totally lose clarity and focus when you over-correct.

It was all so Clear…..

A few weeks ago, I visited my Optometrist for an eye exam and learned my eyes were ready for an upgrade in strength from my current eyeglass prescription. When the new “spectacles” arrived I was anxious to get them. As soon as I put them on I could tell a big difference in the clarity of words and small print. But, I was surprised to find that driving was a different story, street signs that had been clear with my old glasses were now blurry.

The initial feedback was to give my eyes a few days to adjust, but after one week, the experts advised me to return to their office for further investigating. A 2nd round of exams, including stepping outside and literally reading street signs, produced the exact same results as the first exam as far as my eyesight was concerned. I needed to increase my distance power by 2 steps from my previous prescription.

However, a more thorough exam of my new progressive lenses revealed that the (distance) power of the lenses was actually 0.25 stronger than the Optometrist’s prescription stated. An overpower of 0.25 doesn’t sound like much, but it turns out our eyes have the ability to sharpen an image into view when it is under focused, but when it is over focused our eyes can’t correct it. My eyes would actually have to get worse before the overpowered lenses would again produce a clear view of distant objects. The overpowered lenses weren’t helping the clarity of myvision, they were hindering it.

Over Correcting in Business….

At Aspire, we are strong proponents of continuous improvement, to always be sharpening the saw, getting a little better every day. Getting clarity of what you want to achieve, making the necessary adjustments, and creating a road map to get there is part of our process. Improvement is important, but there is a risk… if you try to do too much, too fast, you may do more harm than good.

It can happen as easy as over cutting an eyeglass lens by 0.25. For example, a business makes a small adjustment in one area of their business and it nets a positive result. But instead of being patient and making sure everything else is still clearly in focus, they think if 2X was good, then 3X will make it even better! They do it without making sure the long-term objectives of the business are still being met.

Additionally, the results of an over-correction in one area can trigger a false positive to make adjustments in other areas of the business that are totally unrelated to the first changes that were made.

The intentions are good; they are striving to make improvements in their company, but too much can actually be more damaging than too little. An over correction can be costly, and sometimes you can’t undo it. Have you ever put too much salt into a recipe? It is hard to undo.

Seeing Clearly …

The best thing to do to avoid over correcting is to simply think in terms of taking baby steps. Don’t try to do it all at once. Author Jim Collins uses the analogy of shooting bullets before you shoot a cannon ball as the best way to find the range. When you make adjustments step back and take a look at your entire company. How did that change, correction, or improvement impact the other areas of your business? Is everything still in focus? Are your short-term results still aligning with your long term goals? Your long-term vision?

There are always going to be situations where drastic measures and aggressive corrective actions are required. But, it should the exception and not the norm. If it is the norm for your business, you’re probably putting it at risk of over-correcting. Keep improving, but the next time you make an adjustment, remember to step back and make sure everything else is still in focus.

]]>http://aspirekc.com/3412-2/feed/0How the FBI Can Help You Sell More Effectively…http://aspirekc.com/how-the-fbi-can-help-you-sell-more-effectively/
http://aspirekc.com/how-the-fbi-can-help-you-sell-more-effectively/#respondMon, 17 Oct 2016 21:38:50 +0000http://aspirekc.com/?p=3409

When it comes to closing a sale, what you ultimately want to hear is ‘yes’. But the reality is that the road to getting to that ‘yes’ isn’t a straight line.

In fact, if you focus your efforts and push for that ‘yes’ from the outset of your sales process, you’re not going to get there. It’s probably not what you’d expect, but the FBI actually has a lot of data and experience with this.

It turns out there’s a necessary detour that has to happen in the sales interaction in order to get to that final ‘yes’. Before you can make progress towards ‘yes’, what you really want to hear from your potential customer is ‘that’s right’.

Why ‘That’s Right’ is more important than ‘Yes’…

Before he left the FBI to start up his own consulting practice, author Chris Voss was the lead negotiator for the FBI. He was the guy that got pulled into the difficult and high profile situations, kidnappings, hostages, etc. and it was his job to find a resolution that kept anyone from getting killed and brought the bad guys in. It’s one of the toughest jobs out there and one that requires constant learning and field refinement of techniques and theories.

In his new book, Never Split the Difference, Voss explains that the FBI has taken a very different approach to negotiations than the traditional business and academic worlds…and based on his experiences both in the FBI and now out in private practice working with the business world, the FBI has figured out a few very important things.

For starters, their negotiations model is based on the importance of empathizing with your counterpart. Establishing a real, emotional connection is critical to getting a deal done. Historically, organizations like Harvard Business School and other academic groups have developed their ‘getting to yes’ negotiating approach based on the idea of rational economic behavior. Basically, it’s the idea that people will always ultimately make the decision that’s most logical based on costs and income.

It turns out the negotiating academics have been wrong on this for quite a while. If you haven’t read it, you should check out Dan Ariely’s great book – Predictably Irrational. He does a great job of explaining (based on lots of scientific studies) that we collectively, don’t make decisions rationally, we make them emotionally and that a model based on anything else is ultimately going to fail.

In a negotiation, this means that you’re not going to sway the other side with your brilliant logic. In fact, what the FBI and Voss have learned and used over the past 20 or 30 years is that you have to first build a genuine connection with the other side before you can make any progress on the deal. The other side has to know that you understand their situation and where they are coming from.

The most succinct and effective way to show that you’ve made that connection is when they tell you ‘that’s right’. That’s the clear sign that they know, and appreciate, that you ‘get them’. And once that happens, it leaves them open to persuasion and sales.

How to get to ‘That’s Right’…

Whether it’s sales or a negotiation, this idea of getting to ‘that’s right’ first changes the way you look at the interactions with the other party. Your pitch, whatever it is that you want, isn’t important (at least not yet). What is important is to get the other side to genuinely open up about what their challenges are. This isn’t likely going to happen right away – like a good detective, you’re going to have to dig for the truth. Here are a few techniques that might help you:

Ask well-thought out open, ended questions to get them talking

Become comfortable with silence and pauses as a way to encourage them to go deeper

Use simple mirroring techniques to get them to expand on their thoughts (typically as simple as repeating the last 2 or 3 words in a non-judgemental, questioning tone)

And finally, once you feel like you have a pretty good understanding of what’s going on, and more importantly, where they’re coming from emotionally, you need to summarize the situation. A good summary will reflect back the situation plus acknowledge how that situation makes them feel. As an example, you might describe a situation where a business owner is losing money and let them know that you understand that it’s probably a frustrating and maybe even scary situation for them (or whatever kinds of emotions they shared with you).

If you’ve done all of that right, the other person will look at you with some slight gratitude and tell you, in essence, ‘that’s right’. They now know that you understand their situation and it will open them up to the idea of problem-solving and addressing their challenges – without triggering the resistance that a sales pitch might normally give them.

Although this technique comes from a book on negotiations, it’s perfectly suited for selling. Especially for sales that are a little more complex. If you want someone to be open to what you have to offer them, you have to first make the effort to connect with them and understand their situation…which is where ‘that’s right’ comes from.

What do you think? Does this make sense to you? Do you ever struggle with a sales discussion? Is it because you were pushing for ‘yes’ before you got to ‘that’s right’? We’d love to hear your thoughts – share them in the comments below.

]]>http://aspirekc.com/how-the-fbi-can-help-you-sell-more-effectively/feed/0Three Must Have Skills for Business Owners who want to Growhttp://aspirekc.com/three-must-have-skills-for-business-owners-who-want-to-grow/
http://aspirekc.com/three-must-have-skills-for-business-owners-who-want-to-grow/#respondMon, 10 Oct 2016 19:58:12 +0000http://aspirekc.com/?p=3404

The required skill set of a successful business owner or business leader is broad with few boundaries. Plus, the best entrepreneurs continually work to improve existing skills or learn something new. It really is a never ending process. It would not take much effort to create a list of 20 skills every business owner should be very competent at. Defining this ‘required’ skill set and mastering it is a dilemma many of our clients often wrestle with as their desire to work on their business competes with the hours they are working in their business.

You have to keep climbing the mountain, but you have to start somewhere…

Here Are Three Skills to build on…

Communication:

You must be able to communicate effectively. There are very few successful business owners or business leaders that are not effective communicators. Effective communication is much more than memos or words. It includes the interpersonal skills of being able to understand what others are saying, even when they aren’t saying a word. Understanding the different behavioral styles people have and how to communicate with them so they understand you. You can have the greatest vision in your head, but if you can’t communicate it to someone else it has little value. Don’t underestimate the power of communication.

Don’t underestimate the power of communication – it’s the glue that makes everything else work.

Strategic Vision:

You have to able to pull yourself up out of the weeds of the business and look at the bigger picture. It is way too easy for business owners to get sucked into a rabbit hole that prevents them from seeing all of the other important drivers that can impact their business. Thinking strategically about your business and strategically about your planning is the best way to get clarity on the direction of your business. It gets you to ask questions about your company. It challenges you to question where your resources are being allocated. Are you investing time and money or are you wasting it. Are you clear on where you’re heading?

As the business owner, you are the ONLY person that can create a strategic vision for your business…without that, you’re running blind.

Organized:

You can’t manage all the moving parts of a business without being organized. This can be a big obstacle for many entrepreneurial business owners. They have tons of ideas and jump from one idea to the next with very little effort. However, without some degree of organization, none of those great ideas ever gets off the ground. The good news is that there are lots of ways to improve if this is a skill you are challenged with. There are a ton of great apps to help you get organized and there are professional organization experts who can help guide or train you in this area.

You can’t scale your business without structure and organization. Otherwise, you simply have chaos. Get organized.

These three skills are only the tip of the iceberg, but you do have to start somewhere. These are foundational skills and will help you add other skills you’ll need to grow and build a successful business. What about you? Are these at the top of your list? What are some of the skills you see as fundamental to business success? As always we value your comments in the space below.

Do you ever feel like there’s not enough time in the day and that you’ve definitely got more to do than you’ll ever be able to get done? Do you feel overwhelmed?

Are you spending time on stuff that’s ultimately not important? Or maybe on stuff that’s really not important to you, but you’re working on it anyway? Do feel like you have a lack of focus?

That problem is the core of the book Essentialism by Greg McKeown and he does a great job of illustrating a challenge all of us have dealt with at one time or another.

There are a lot of great, powerful, ideas in this book but one quote really jumped out at me:

“If you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will.”

When you’re not focused, strategic, and accountable for how you spend your time and efforts, the end result is going to be lots of wasted effort, false progress, frustration and reduced success. As McKeown explains, that’s the path of nonessentialism – the undisciplined pursuit of more. One way to counteract the path of nonessentialism is to have the right mindset and to really understand, live and breathe the Pareto Principle…the law of the Vital Few (the 80/20 rule).

The Law of the Vital Few

In case you haven’t thought about in a while, the Law of the Vital Few states that in any given situation there are a few things that are vastly more important than everything else. To put it in terms of the 80/20 rule – 80% of your results are coming from 20% of your actions. *Note – don’t get hung up on the actual percentages – maybe it’s 65% of your results coming from 25% of your actions…but the end result is the same:

There are some things you do, as an individual or as a company, that are much, much more important than everything else.

In fact, if you flip that idea on its head, it’s clear that most of the things you do aren’t important…! Obviously, the real trick, then, is to figure out what your Vital Few things really are and start focusing your efforts on those things most of the time.

But how do you do that? Here are 3 ideas that will help you start figuring out your Vital Few:

Give Yourself Space

One of the big problems most of us face is all the work that we’re currently trying to get done every single day. Most of our schedules are so jam-packed that we literally don’t have any time to think – we only have time to react.

Counter-intuitively if you want to be more productive, you need to start doing less, and specifically, you need to build time into your schedule to think and to breathe.

Seeing the big picture or figuring out your ‘Vital Few’ ideas isn’t an easy thing to do, but it’s downright impossible if you don’t have enough space and the time to dig in and think about things. Bill Gates famously takes a couple of weeks out of the year, hides away without any distractions and just reads and thinks. Gino Wickman, the author of the excellent book ‘Traction’ highly recommends what he calls clarity breaks. A couple of hours every week or so where you can just get away from everything and look at the big picture of your business.

What would it take for you to find some real space to think about what’s going on?

Say ‘No’ (a lot more often)

One potential way to open up your calendar is to actively start saying ‘no’ to almost everything that others ask you to do. If most things are truly not important, then turning down requests from others is a great place to start freeing up your time.

There’s a good chance this idea makes you uncomfortable…and for good reason. None of us like to disappoint anyone and we’ve often been trained from an early age to be agreeable to say ‘yes’ to things. The reality is that most people will respect you even more if you politely, and firmly tell them ‘no’.

Try it for a week and see how it goes. What do you have to lose?

Look for the Signal in the Noise

Finally, if you want to figure out what’s really important, what’s part of your ‘vital few’, then you need to develop the skill of picking up the essential core of what’s going on around you. World class journalists are trained to analyze situations and facts in order to get to the underlying heart of the story. They listen to what’s not being said, they look for the signal in the noise as ways to come up with the big picture impacts.

Consider keeping a journal to help you identify patterns on issues, where you spend your time, what boils to the top of your thoughts, etc. Keep asking yourself (and your team), ‘What problem are we really trying to solve’ as a way to get to the heart of what’s really going on. The reality is that most of us spend an awful lot of time with surface level distractions that ultimately aren’t important and until we can get past that we will continue to be unable to identify the ‘vital few’.

What about you and your business? Do you know the top 2 or 3 things that really drive your success? Are you trying to do it all or are you focused in on your vital few? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this – share them in the comments below.